nicer than the last few. In the park, homeless people are emerging from boxes pushed together like trains. Cardboard condos. I wend my way past intricate metal stairways and under mélanges of scaffolding and torn advertisements for magazines, and sunlight bounces off glistening marble statues and embeds itself in glass doors. Hordes of commuters flood the streets in their gray and navy-blue uniforms, all of them walking—as is often the case—in the opposite direction of me.
On a corner, a balding, timid-looking guy is handing out something and yelling. Everyone brushes past him. He keeps trying to give them a yellow flyer, and they keep turning their heads away. I vow to take the flyer when he hands it to me. It must be awful to stand there all day being rejected. However, he only gives me a cursory glance and then hands a flyer to the person next to me.
I stand there, waiting.
Finally, he shyly says, “Oh,” and thrusts one in my hand.
The First Prophets’ Church, it says at the top, and there’s a long explanation of how Joseph Natto, an Episcopalian minister, had a vision way back in 1998 that his preachings about the church were lacking in something. A list of ten rules suddenly appeared in his mind.
This is a real original story.
I look up, and Tonsure-Head is talking s-l-o-w-l-y to a Spanish woman who is staring at him wide-eyed as if the more she opens her eyes, the more she’ll understand English. I’ve noticed that religious nuts always prey on foreigners. Anyone else would be too smart to fall for their fabrications. I’m tempted to go up and ask the guy why he only talks to people who don’t have a good command of English. Lately, my life has been about saying exactly what’s on my mind, particularly to people who need to change. Unfortunately, religious nuts are the one phylum that loves that. When they’re challenged, a dreamy smile crosses their faces like a trail of footprints and they give an answer like, “Oh, you have to have faith, and once you accept [insert name of savior here] into your heart, you will understand.” Then they’ll surely tell you some story about how once, they were just like you, until they had their moment of inspiration and it changed their life forever.
The key to all religions is simply believing whatever they tell you and not allowing a scintilla of rational doubt to enter your mind. None of us was around 2,000 or 5,700 years ago (or 173.5 years if you’re a Mormon—sorry, Mormons) to know what really happened, so people decide whose story to choose, and which steadfast principles to select, based upon such important criteria as what their parents forced them to believe growing up and what other relatives forced them to believe growing up. At least Mormons hold off on baptizing their kids until they’re eight, but is an eight-year-old going to be any more resistant than a baby?
I keep watching Tonsure-Head speaking mas des-pac-i-o to the Spanish woman and I wait around to see if he’ll try to convert me, too. That wouldn’t be so bad, if he can give me good answers to my questions about religion. If he does that, I’ll give him a chance. That’s a big if.
Suddenly, a strange feeling wells up in me that I get once in a while. It feels hollow and icy, and it’s right in my gut. It makes me want to warm myself up inside. I look at him and wonder if this religion is all he has. Who am I to make fun of it? Maybe it’s something he loves. Maybe he’s lonely.
Something else makes me sad, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Then, the feeling goes away in a few seconds. Good.
I keep waiting for Tonsure-Head to talk to me, but he ignores me. I wonder if he realizes that because he himself is not a minority, he himself would not be one of the people he would have reached out to on the street. How hypocritical.
I give up, take the flyer home, and tape it to the side of my protruding closet. It’s got an address for the church on the bottom.
It’s an organization, so if I join it, I can fulfill the second goal on Dr. Petrov’s list. But if I go to one of their services, my real goal will be to infiltrate this organization and expose it as a cult. I don’t want it taking advantage of people. I’ll protect the gullible.
Several days later, I finally have the pleasure of bringing my top-ten list to Petrov. Even though it’s really a top-eight list.
Before I can discuss it, though, Petrov asks me again if I’ve made any new friends. I tell him that I haven’t, but to please him, I mention my conversation with Douglas P. Winters.
“Sounds like he might have been flirting with you,” Petrov says.
“Eh.”
“Are you interested?”
“He seemed a little…sex-obsessed.”
Petrov sits back. “I know you think that most people are sex-obsessed,” he says. “While I have no doubt that it’s true in many cases, I would gather that if you were older, and if you had more sexual experience, it wouldn’t seem as glaring.”
Of course. Petrov thinks I’m a virgin. Everyone assumes that if you think the world is sex-obsessed, you must not have had sex. As if sex is so all-consuming that once you have it, you can completely justify the fact that it’s scrolling through everyone’s brain twenty-four hours a day. Plus, people think that, in general, if you express perfectly logical criticisms of the way society works, it means you’re “uptight” and “need to get laid.” As if sex is a cure for everything.
I haven’t ever told Petrov about my experiences with Professor Harrison.
I guess it’s true that, because of confidentiality rules, he wouldn’t be allowed to tell my father, which is a plus. But I don’t see why he has to know anyway. At least, not yet. I spent years in college not telling people about Harrison. I’m good at it.
“How do you know I’m not sexually experienced?” I ask.
“Are you?”
“I don’t see how it’s relevant to a discussion of whether other people are sex-obsessed. I can have opinions regardless of whether I, myself, have had sex.”
“True,” he says. “But it’s hard to comment on what it’s like to take a plane if you’ve never been off the ground. However, if you have had sexual experiences, and you want to discuss them…”
“Nope,” I say. I decide that I’d better change the subject quickly—this time, anyway. “I thought about joining an organization last week.”
“Really?” he says, interested.
I tell him about Tonsure-Head and the church, and how it might be a cult that should be exposed.
Petrov says, “You would have taken the flyer anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even if you didn’t want to expose the church as a cult, you would have taken the religious flyer anyway. You would have taken the flyer for the same reason you keep coming to see me even though you say you don’t need to.”
Oh, won’t he please enlighten me about my very own secret motivations for every single thing I do, which I’m sure he has a brilliant theory to explain? “I come here to get my father’s money’s worth,” I say.
Petrov says, “You come here to talk to me. I’m paid to listen. Maybe you’re insecure and think other people won’t listen to you. But I do. If you
